Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) is pushing hard to bring the technology to market to improve the attractiveness of mobile offerings based on its processors such as Intel-based ultrabooks and smartphones. Intel has been developing resonant wireless charging since before October 2008.

IDT (San Jose, Calif.) said it plans to be able to provide samples the resonance receiver IC by the end of 2012 and the year, and of the transmitter IC sometime in the first half of 2013. Intel and IDT also plan to deliver resonant wireless charging reference designs for use in Ultrabooks, PCs, smartphones, and standalone chargers.

Wireless charging over distances of a few millimeters or centimeters using magnetic induction has been seen as a promising application area for a number of years but has been difficult to find an efficient means of energy transfer and consensus on standards has been slow to build.

"Our extensive experience in developing the innovative and highly integrated IDTP9030 transmitter and multi-mode IDTP9020 receiver has given IDT a proven leadership position in the wireless power market,” said Arman Naghavi, vice president and general manager of the analog and power division at IDT, in a statement.

"We think the ability to have a wire-free charging experience with a broad ecosystem of devices like keyboards, mice, storage devices, cameras and smartphones will be realized in the near future," said Gary Huang, director of PC growth and innovation at Intel, in the same statement.

"Wireless" has remote connotations, which obviously are inconsistent with the required resonant conditions for high efficiency. Just call it resonant inductive coupling, there's no proximity advantage over wired.

In the trend of GREEN initiatives , this wireless charging techniques is likely to do just the opposite - wasting more energy to the losses than the energy transferred to the device being charged.And if is going to be just a few millimeters and centimeters what is the advantage?

There were various institutes, including MIT, doing extensive research in wireless charging. The improvement over years is a lot. Nonetheless, according to law of physics, wireless charging just can't beat direct connection in terms of efficiency. Given this fact, would you rather pay a bit more to get the convenience that wireless charging brings on the table?

We had an HP TouchPad and TouchStone wireless charging dock for a few weeks for evaluation and it charged as quickly as our iPad did using a wired connection.
Here are user reviews from Amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/HP-Touchstone-Charging-Dock-TouchPad/product-reviews/B0055QYJIS/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
I think that like most things, wireless needs to ba an option. It is ideally suited to rugged devices that may get wet and/or use by the elderly who may not want the hassle of fiddling with cables and are less likely to be moving their device around, it will normally lay near the telephone or a coffee table. (This based on ageing family members!)